Alibaba plans to ask major users of the next version of its Qwen open-source AI model for a share of the revenue they generate from it, according to two people familiar with the company's plans — a Reuters exclusive published Friday.
Until now, Alibaba has charged developers only when models are hosted on its own cloud, letting most open-source offerings run in customers' data centers for free. The new revenue-share requirement could be implemented as soon as next week, the sources said.
The move follows Moonshot's Kimi K3, released last month. Tucked into its license is a provision requiring anyone selling the model as a service with more than $20 million in annual sales to reach a commercial agreement — with revenue shares of up to 30% reported.
Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max, unveiled Monday, is open-weight, and the company says the next release will be its most powerful yet. The shift shows Chinese labs, which have stunned markets by releasing frontier-class open models, are converging on Silicon Valley's freemium playbook: give the model away, charge the heavy commercial users.
US firms hosting Chinese models — including DigitalOcean and Fireworks AI — have already signed commercial agreements with Moonshot, and executives describe the arrangement as a 'tried and tested open-source freemium model'.
